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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

As much as I like the "Ashkenazi Jews are a genetically smarter population" hypothesis, it's not sufficient to explain what's going on. It's probably necessary that some level of intelligence exists within a population for startups to happen, but it's probably a vanishingly small part of the equation.

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The combination of IQ and "chutzpah" is the essence of the entrepreneurial personality. If Jews are (for whatever reason) disposed to be high on these traits, it's certainly a sufficient explanation.

Not only does it not explain why there are so many Israeli startups, but it's a false hypothesis altogether. Aside from the fact that IQ is more a representation of adaptation to modernity than intelligence, there are many environmental factors that come into play.

There would probably be more startups in the Arab population if they weren't so discriminated against in the country.

That is possible. On the other hand, you don't really see too many start ups in nations where the Arab population makes up the majority either, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, etc.

In Lebanon, there are tons of startups. That's because the Arab population isn't oppressed by their own government the way they are in Saudi Arabia (women being executed for witchcraft and so forth).

I can't believe someone down-voted my previous comment. Is it now anti-Semitic to say that the Jews aren't genetically superior to everyone else?

(Oh, I should let you know that Iranians are NOT Arab, contrary to popular belief. They're Persians.)

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